


Like A Second Heart

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7082482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky trudges through dusky forests with grit in his teeth and blood on his hands and looks up at the tree-smothered sky and knows there’s warmth and soft stillness out there—God help him, he just can’t quite remember where.</p><p>Or, the history of a long and tangled love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Second Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Not Easily Conquered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289208) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 



_The past beats inside me like a second heart._

  
—John Banville, _The Sea_  


———

There’s a sunlit room, somewhere, with peeling wallpaper and a radio in the corner. It’s so full of sunlight because there are no curtains—nothing to keep out the dawn as it rises, striking dust motes and a head of golden hair.

Bucky remembers the last look he had of it, on his way out the door with Steve, taking a moment to run back in and check the drawers one more time in case he’d forgotten something. Really it’s to make sure he hasn’t left that god-awful letter lying around, why he didn’t burn it months ago, he’ll never know—

“It’s not like you’re leaving forever,” Steve says from where he’s still standing outside. “And you can’t take a whole lot with you anyways, right?”

The drawers are filled with nothing but socks. “‘Course it’s not forever.” Bucky breathes a sigh of relief and walks back out, slower than usual. He remembers now, shoving it in with the old newspaper earlier in the summer. Good. “And excuse me, Rogers, if I don’t feel like leavin’ my rosary behind.”

Steve snorts. “What rosary?”

With his hand on the doorknob, Bucky glances back—the pockmarked table with the chairs that wobble, three blankets piled on the sorry thing they call the couch, or, when they’re feeling fancy, the _chaise._ He can still see the big brown splotch from the time Steve’s soup exploded, and the little burns from smokes Bucky stubs out as he comes inside, and the pile of beat-up books salvaged from the trash, and—he pulls the door shut. “Aw, c’mon, now,” he says. “I pray.”

“Only when your ma made you.” Steve hands him the key. “You better have a good story planned for Saint Peter.” Then his smile freezes and he blinks away to one side. “I mean—”

“No story,” Bucky says, ignoring it, even though he feels something sick and heavy in the pit of his stomach. He fumbles putting the key in the lock. “When I show up at the pearly gates, I’m just gonna put on my big smile and bat my eyes. ‘Course,” he adds, “it’d work better if I had a pretty pair like yours.”

There’s only a little roughness in Steve’s voice when he says, “I don’t think even that could save you, Buck.”

Bucky turns around. “Nope.” He grins, cheerful, as they start down the steps. “Me, I’m goin’ straight to hell.”

That room’s still standing. Bucky knows it, or at least believes it—he’s got to, the same way some of the guys still really do worry their rosaries, even with everything they see out here. And Bucky trudges through dusky forests with grit in his teeth and blood on his hands and looks up at the tree-smothered sky and knows there’s warmth and soft stillness out there—God help him, he just can’t quite remember where.

———

 

Some of the guys have books. Even Dugan, the bastard, brought along something to read—it’s a Bible, but it makes Bucky wish he’d given the matter a little more thought. He and Steve had a whole pile at home.

“Incoming, Barnes.”

He manages to catch the book as it comes sailing out of the darkness, and he doesn’t quite recognize the hushed voice, but when he opens the cover he sees, in a pretty hand, _Je t’aime, je t’aime, mon Chèr—Marion._ “This yours, Jones?”

“My girl’s,” comes Jones’s slow drawl. “Goddamn, I hate that book, but they can hear you sighin’ all the way in Berlin.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says dryly. He turns to the front and sees it’s _A Tale of Two Cities._ “Aw, gee, Jones, you sure know how to treat a fella—”

“Will you shut up?” Morita mumbles from somewhere to the right. “Some of us enjoy sleeping.”

Bucky looks at the book. He’s never read Dickens, though he always kinda liked the sound of having read him. And he’s not tired—hasn’t been, really, since Azzano. Sure, he’s exhausted deep in all his bones, but sleep stays miles away. So he opens the book.

“So, how is it?” Steve asks a week later from across the fire. They’re waiting for night to fall so they can move again—everyone else is off pissing or playing cards or sleeping, whiling away the hours. “Gabe said you wouldn’t give it back when he asked.”

After a moment, Bucky looks up from the page, fully aware he’s going to see Steve’s keen, sharp look. He can only weather it for a second or two. “It’s good,” he says. “A little hard to swallow sometimes, not sure how much I like this Carton guy—but yeah, Steve, it’s swell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it when you’re done?”

“Well—sure,” Bucky says, reluctant and trying hard to hide it. “Maybe ask Jones, though?”

“Right,” Steve says, “of course.” And he gets right up and goes over to where they’re all clustered around a flat rock, ready to ask, and is greeted by enthusiastic invitations to play.

Bucky frowns down at the book. He finished it two days ago. But he doesn’t tell Steve that—and the next afternoon, it’s tucked inside his jacket as he falls.

———

Two minutes they stand there, not moving, breathing deep, and Bucky thinks it might be the first real breath he’s had in his life. Certainly it’s the first one in decades. “Sorry I ran,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve shakes his head and grips him tighter. “’S okay.” There’s a beat. “You ran _fast.”_

“Well.” Bucky tucks his chin and smells him, same as ever, fresh out of 1945, sun-warmed and solid. “I had some demons chasin’ me. You know.”

“Yeah,” Steve hums. “I know.” He shifts, as if he’s about to pull back, but then fists his hands in the back of Bucky’s shirt. “Thought I’d just come back and wait for you to find me, in the end,” he says. “Is there anywhere you didn’t hide?”

Bucky nods. “Jersey.”

They’re pressed so close together that when Steve starts laughing, Bucky feels it all through his body.

———

“It’s our last candle,” Steve says.

The wax is puddling around the base, spreading slightly over the windowsill, and the flame sputters low on the wick. “We got a good ten minutes,” Bucky guesses. He looks at Steve, the way the soft light flickers changefully over the planes of his face. Then he tries not to look.

“Five,” Steve says, and sighs. “We’re not even supposed to be awake. We shouldn’t use it all up.”

“Aw, your ma won’t be mad,” Bucky says. “It’s the last night of summer, what can she do?” Then he laughs. “Don’t answer that.”

Steve laughs, too, and they shift to lie facing each other on the narrow bed. “She wouldn’t touch you,” Steve promises. “You’re the apple of her eye.”

With Steve looking at him like that, Bucky feels naked, exposed, all his thoughts laid bare. “I don’t know about that.” Somehow they’ve started whispering.

“The apple of everyone’s eye,” Steve assures him. “You know Edith Dunne says—”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t like Edith Dunne,” he says. “‘Sides, what about you?”

Even in all the shadows, it’s obvious that Steve’s flushing red. “What about me?”

“Dames’ll be linin’ up to talk to you. Just wait.” Seized by something stupid, Bucky takes Steve’s chin in his hand. “What a looker,” he croons in a high falsetto, “I declare, he’s the most handsomest fella I ever saw.” He grins—but then it fades, and the laughter on Steve’s face quiets. “What a looker,” he repeats, almost inaudible, barely hearing himself. He brushes the pad of his thumb over Steve’s bottom lip.

The candlelight makes Steve’s eyes into burning things. “Bucky?” he breathes, shifts a hair closer—

 _”Shit!_ Bucky yelps, as the candle gives in to the tilt of its changing weight and spills a large amount of hot wax on his forehead. He sits up, rubbing at the spot, hissing in pain.

Steve blows out the candle and all at once they’re in darkness, with the streetlamp on the pavement below providing the only weak light in the room. “Is it bad?” he asks, touching Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky shakes his head, shakes him off. “Nah, it’s fine.” He’s not lying, but his voice is short and distorted around the sudden tightness in his throat. “Did—did your ma hear?”

They’re silent for a moment. “No,” Steve says at length.

“Good.” They lie back down, turned toward each other again, heads and feet close, almost touching. Bucky can feel Steve watching him like he imagines it would feel to have a gun pointed at his head. Everything in him wants to look, but he’s guarded against the pull now, and keeps his eyes closed.

After a minute, during which every breath is amplified to ten times its normal volume, Steve gives a soft sigh. “Night, Bucky.”

When Bucky opens his eyes, Steve’s are closed. It hurts more than he thought it would, especially considering he wanted it so bad. “G’night, Steve,” he murmurs, tucks his head, does his best not to drift closer in the night.

———

He follows Steve, several yards back, and knows where he’s going long before they arrive. Arlington stretches out forever, it seems, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of little white pillars, small monuments, and Steve walks through them all to get to the one he’s aiming for—no searching, he just heads straight for it, and then he stands there, hands in his pockets, and heaves out a breath in the chilled Virginia air.

“Found you again, Buck,” he says, so quietly that Bucky almost doesn’t catch it, lingering as he is with his cap pulled low and his face turned half away. “I haven’t even been back here since they—well—but you know that. Wasn’t sure I’d remember which one was yours. But I found you again.” He snorts. “You found me first, though, huh?”

For a long time he’s silent. Each glance Bucky chances shows that he’s just looking at the white stone, unblinking with his shoulders hunched. Once or twice, he shifts, like he’s about to go, but he never does more than lift one foot or the other before setting it back down and frowning deeper. Dammit, Rogers, Bucky thinks, just spit it out. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this grave because he’s not under it, and you’d think Steve would be smart enough to do the same.

Then Steve does spit it out, and Bucky learns for the millionth time in his long and harrowed life to be careful what he wishes for. “I didn’t feel like wandering much, right after I woke up. It was all too crazy. But eventually I had to get outside and I didn’t think, I just walked—and I blinked and I was in Brooklyn. Right down the block from Cracciola’s, can you believe it’s still standing? Owned by the same family, too. And then I couldn’t stop myself from walking over to our old place and, well.” Steve shakes his head. “They must’ve torn it down a long time ago. Just a bank there now.”

He lets out a long breath. “After that, there wasn’t much to see, you know? But I kept going back, like I was looking for something, or waiting. After a few months I realized it was you.” His voice is tight now, and a minute passes before he continues. “I knew you were gone, I knew it every day, but it felt like—if I just walked through enough of the alleys where you found me bleeding, you’d come patch me up again. Or if I spent enough time down on the pier, I’d hear my name and I’d turn and there you’d be with that smile of yours—”

Steve buckles, falls to his knees, one hand out gripping the marker with knuckles as white as the marble. He mumbles something and Bucky moves closer to catch it, closer than is wise, but everything in him is scraping and warping like old metal—“Buck,” Steve says, “oh, Bucky,” and his voice is wrong and only then does Bucky realize that he’s crying, silently, without much in the way of sobs, but tears drip steadily from the end of his nose to the earth, watering the grass where Bucky’s body ought to be.

He wishes to be there, beneath the ground, if only so he wouldn’t have to hear this or feel the upheaval between his ribs. What Zola did to him in Austria, what they did to him ever since, it was nothing to this. He stands rooted to the spot like a gravestone himself and just as cold. _Steve,_ something in him clamors, _Steve I’m sorry, Steve I didn’t mean to, Steve—_

But Steve isn’t done yet. He’s leaning his head against the stone now, his shoulders shaking very slightly. “I could feel you there,” he says. “It was impossible but I could. Out in the world somewhere. And I could handle feeling all that,” he says, “if only I hadn’t been right.”

———

“I coulda beat ‘em.”

The kid is bleeding from his nose, knuckles, and knees, more from falling against the bricks than landing any blows, and his skinny chest is heaving like the fight lasted a lot longer than it did. But he’s glaring with a hard anger and his eyes could just about shoot sparks, so all Bucky says is, “Sure, I know.”

“Then why’d you hafta jump in?”

“‘Cause—” The kid’s still gasping, even swaying a little, but he just plants his feet farther apart like he’s getting ready to take on Bucky, too. “‘Cause anyone who fights like that’s gonna do somethin’ big, and I kinda wanted in on the glory.” Bucky looks at him—looks down a whole foot at him. “And no offense, but they were about ten times your size.”

For a moment the kid just blinks at him; then he grins, crooked, and wipes his bloody nose on his sleeve. “Well, thanks,” he says. He sticks out a hand, like a grown-up who doesn’t have dirt on his face. “Steve Rogers.”

Bucky shakes, and is surprised at the strength of the grip. “James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve squints. “Bucky.”

Steve nods, but he doesn’t stop squinting—Bucky realizes he just can’t quite see that clearly, because he squints at his own hands, sucking on the broken skin at the knuckles. “So,” Steve says around his hand, “I’m gonna do somethin’ big, huh?” They start walking out of the alley.

Brooklyn traffic clamors around them as they emerge onto the street, and still Steve is walking with more bravado than should fit on his bony shoulders. “Big trouble,” Bucky tells him.

———

It’s as if disaster will strike if they leave each other’s sight for more than five minutes at a time. Bucky’s not sure what it is he’s scared of—Steve disappearing, or himself. But he knows he’s not going to test it.

Steve didn’t complain the first night when Bucky left the couch and came trailing into Steve’s bedroom, lay down beside him in the dark. In the morning they were both still there, and that was what mattered. So he did it again the next night. It’s a pattern that’s held so far.

Bucky loves the shape they make, mismatched parentheses curved in towards each other, two cupped hands facing each other. He watches the shadows play over Steve’s face, listens to the Brooklyn night, and feels strange in his chest, like something’s pressing right over his ribs. It’s a good pressure. The sensation flutters memories in the back of his mind, the place where old recollections keep cropping up—this time, it’s just flashes: fireworks over the docks, big band music in a smoky hall, a melting candle and hushed voices.

Ever so slowly, Bucky moves, reaches out a hand and touches Steve’s face. The darkness is almost complete, but his eyes have adjusted, and he traces Steve’s jaw with the lightest touch he can manage, feels the warmth off of his skin.

“It’s different now,” Steve says. He barely moves his lips—he could still be asleep, and his voice is so quiet that Bucky thinks for a moment that he is, but when he flicks his gaze back to Steve’s eyes, they’re open, watching him.

Bucky yanks his hand back, as if the touch of his fingertips will burn. “Steve—”

“People don’t mind so much anymore.” His gaze has something peculiar in it, and all at once familiar.

“What’re you—”

“Two men,” Steve says, and is it a trick of the night that his voice seems unsteady? “They can as good as get married, in the future, they—they don’t have to be scared.” Slow but sure, his hand comes to rest on the place between Bucky’s jaw and throat, right where his pulse pounds. “You don’t have to be scared, Buck.”

His heart clamors in his chest, in the iron cage of fear where he’s locked it up for as long as he can remember—and that’s a long time. The hand on his face electrifies his whole body, sends something vast sweeping through him, leaving him trembling, his voice a bare thread of breath—“Stevie?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and then he presses his lips to Bucky’s, soft, precious, warm.

———

When he wakes from the icy fog, the surface of his mind is storm-rent, but he lashes himself to the most solid thing he can find: the smell of charcoal, the sound of whistling, and eyes, _baby blues, Stevie._ He clings to that with something more than desperation—muscle memory, flooding all his being even after seventy long, dragging years.

———

The noises of Brooklyn hum outside the window—car horns honk, dogs bark, someone smashes a bottle on the street below—and beside Bucky, Steve begins to cough.

It’s sharper than the sound of the splintering glass. It jerks Bucky out of his doze and in fumbling for the water, he knocks it to the floor. “Hell,” he mumbles, and hurries, sleep-blind, to get some more. When he returns, Steve is still coughing from deep in the chest. He reaches weakly for the glass.

“I got it,” Bucky says, and tilts Steve’s head up with one hand, putting the rim to his lips with the other. It’s easy in a way that he hates, an ease born of having to do this too many times. But he comforts himself as he comforts Steve: the rattle of three winters ago hasn’t made a reappearance. Yet.

After a few mouthfuls, Steve sinks back onto the lumpy pillow, white-faced. “Thanks.”

“Nothin’ to thank,” Bucky tells him. He sets the glass on the table and starts soaking up the spill with his jacket, not because there’s nothing else to use but because it’s closest, and he’s not leaving the room.

Steve watches. “You gonna put that back on?” he rasps.

“Yeah, so?”

“Buck, you’ll freeze.”

Bucky sighs and puts the jacket on. It’s cold. He sits back in the chair.

A crease appears between Steve’s brows. “Take the jacket off.”

“No.” What’s wrong with this kid? “I’m not the sick one, why’re you worryin’ about—”

“Take it off,” Steve repeats, his voice cracked and brittle. He coughs again, and then again, and swallows painfully.

It hurts to watch. “Take it easy,” Bucky says. “Don’t talk.”

Steve’s jaw juts out, set, and he visibly suppresses another cough. “If you put on something dry I’ll st-stop talking.”

Bucky stares at him for a second, then rolls his eyes and shoves out of his chair. He drops the jacket over the side of the table in the other room and grabs the last blanket from the couch. Thirteen seconds and he’s already in something of a panic—he knows how quick things can turn—but when he comes back, Steve’s eyes have already closed. Bucky holds a hand in front of his face to check he’s still breathing, and huffs in relief.

Lingering a moment, Bucky brushes Steve’s hair back from his forehead under the pretext of checking his temperature, then lets his hand drift softly down, rests his knuckles against Steve’s cheek and feels how sharp his cheekbone is beneath the skin. The moment stretches out until Bucky can hardly stand it, the close-and-yet-far of it. This is the only way he’ll ever touch him.

And Steve’s too pale, like an unpainted doll and just as fragile, it seems. Still, Bucky would rather have that than the riot of color that was in Mrs. Rogers’s cheeks before she went. He remembers clearly the flush of blood and the shine in her eyes, glazed—but Steve, he thinks, when Steve looked at him, his eyes were clear.

The sound of Steve’s breath hitches on a cough, and all of Bucky’s soul seizes up. “Shh,” he whispers, “hey.” Steve’s eyes stay closed. His chest rises, falls, rises again. Bucky sits with one arm still outstretched, opens his palm so it rests fully against Steve’s skin, cupping his face, knows that he holds in his hand all the tender fear of his heart.

———

The sound bursts into Bucky’s dream, a dreadful moaning that brings him abruptly into wakefulness, where he stares at the dark ceiling for three seconds exactly before he realizes what he’s hearing. Then he’s in action, catching Steve’s wrist as he flails and pulling on his shoulder. “Steve! Wake up!”

Steve does, immediately, catapulting upright with a yell that he strangles in his throat. He clutches at Bucky’s shoulders and holds him firmly at arm’s length. His head bowed, he gasps, and the sound of the yell slowly leaves his lungs. A long minute passes. “The train,” he says, shuddering.

It makes Bucky’s pulse stutter in the worst way imaginable. A long fall, an impact. “No,” he growls, “no, we’re in Brooklyn.”

“I know,” Steve says. “We’re home.” But he isn’t breathing right, with his chest moving in uneven heaves.

And he still won’t let Bucky bring him closer, still keeps him at a distance. “What is it?” Bucky asks. _Why?_

Steve takes his hands away, wipes at his face. “The train,” he says again, and then, “I was falling.”

A hollow feeling grows between Bucky’s ribs. “Jesus, Steve.” He wants to reach out but he isn’t sure if he should—if it’s allowed.

“It should’ve been me,” Steve mumbles, his voice an awful, broken thing. “I should’ve gone after you—”

Steve says other words, but Bucky doesn’t know what they are because he can only sit in mute horror. _It should’ve been me._ If it were Steve—if he had jumped after Bucky, they both would have died, or there would have been two Soldiers, and no one to wake them up. And if it had been only Steve who fell, Bucky knows he’d have let go and felt the wind rushing past just the same. The thought of hanging on, going back to face the world without him, isn’t even unconscionable: it’s unimaginable.

He cuts Steve off. He’s surprised at the sound of himself, cracked open and somehow still harsh, as he says, “Shut the hell up.”

Steve sniffs and shakes his head. _“You_ jumped,” he says. “On the helicarrier. I can’t—Bucky, I can’t forgive myself—”

“Try,” Bucky says, and kisses him. He tries to be soft, but his mind is still full of ice and breaking metal, so when he pulls back he says the only coherent thought he can muster. “I wish,” he says, and breathes out in wonder that he still knows these words. “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.”

That gets him a watery chuckle. “You didn’t make that up.”

“Nah,” Bucky says. “It was in that book Jones lent me. Dickens.”

“Right before—?”

“Yeah.” Bucky cups Steve’s face in both of his hands, the metal and the flesh, and rests their foreheads together. He can’t see anything except vague shapes and shadows, the curve of Steve’s nose. “The last dream of my soul,” he repeats. “You know what that means?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Means you’re right where you’re supposed to be.” Steve’s hands are so warm, resting heavy on Bucky’s throat and chest. “The last dream, the only dream—Stevie, all I’ve dreamed about for the last seventy years is you.”

He hears it when Steve swallows. “Buck.”

Bucky pulls Steve’s head down to his chest, kisses his hair, feels him grow steady in his arms. “I got you now,” he murmurs. “It’s gonna be all right.” He does. And it will.

———

The waking happens so slowly that Bucky’s not quite sure if he’s still dreaming, or if he was never asleep at all. He opens his eyes almost as an afterthought and smiles as he sees that, beside him, Steve lies asleep, his face open and clear, awash in the bright sunrise that streams in through the window. Beyond him, the dust motes twirl.


End file.
